Local Radar: Mother Of Fire, Cadette and more

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A weekly feature on the blog will be a highlight of bands that the local team at The Current is spinning heavily at their desks. You’ll be able to preview a track from each as well as hear them on The Local Show and Local Current.

Mother Of FireEvery Local Radar post needs something particularly challenging for you to sink your teeth into which is why I’ve included the impending doom of Mother Of Fire. It’s at once a mix of local band Brute Heart because of their use of a stringed instrument in such gloriously volatile ways. And yet their cautionary lyrics are indicative of something Phantom Payn Days would have put out, both of which have a connection to local label De Stijl Records. It’s explosively rhythmic, and mad props are always in order for bands that can keep themselves together when compositions get this complex. Their new record Feral Children is out April 20.

CadetteCadette contains ex-members of Baby Guts, The Deaf and The Yuckies, bands which have helped shape the Twin Cities’ seminal punk scene. These ladies play their instruments better than many musicians ever will — Cadette gets on stage, barrels through their set, and they know they’ve nailed it every time. Unfortunately, like most bands of this nature in the region, they are severly overlooked in their prowess. Whether or not Cadette is just a solid side-project, it’s worth advocating for them. We’ll most likely look back on Minnesota music in a decade and realize just how influential they were (see: The Soviettes). Their new release Flesh Without Hunting is out now.

The CounterfactualsThe opening of “Running Dry” sounds strangely familiar to The Shins’ “Sleeping Lessons” — do you hear that pulsating, jangly guitar work and driving drumkit in the background? What made “Sleeping Lessons” so good was that the particular pop motif James Mercer explored was certified gold from the beginning, the tried and true test of a quiet, languid start where the melody crashes through the fuzz to a thick layer of volume by the end. The Counterfactuals have made their own “Sleeping Lessons” with this song. The four professors out of Northfield, three from Carleton and the other one from St. Olaf, were voted best band in the city in 2010 and have been working on their debut record inbetween grading papers. In the meantime, they released some demos on their Bandcamp. And if these demos sound this impressive, I’m extremely curious to hear where they go once the physical record is actually out this fall.

Big LakeBig Lake’s first EP came out last summer. It fell into our hands out of nowhere as most local submissions do and didn’t offer much context on the origins of the group. I remember when we switched on “Sugar Flies” and reactions in the room were unanimous: here is a band with a style that we’ve heard time and again, but there was something so remarkably fresh about what they were doing. A month or two later we got another couple of tracks before the band disappeared from the release radar up until this past week. It’s great to hear another song from them, and I hope a debut is in the works. The continual refinement illustrates a band that doesn’t want to sink into complacency, and that recipe is very promising for the future of Big Lake.